Introduction
To relieve the discussion and debating on the new Enviromental-Created Issue now sweeping through the United States; I thought it would be a delightful reform to bring up a not very well known Enviromental issue called Dead Zones and see how you all feel about this topic. I'm not taking any side, really, on the issue just want to bring up some needed information and collect ideas my fellow Stupid-Boy'ers had it.

Description of Dead Zones
Dead Zones are areas of water, ranging in size in which a process called Hypoxia depletes Oxygen from the water which causes all Marine life to die, either directly or indirectly. The detrimental effects of these Dead Zones is a wide one, when looking at it as a whole. Now as more and more individuals learn more about these effects, hope to cease, or at least slow them is becoming more of a reality. The reason from these Dead Zones are mainly made from Humans, but in no-way intentional.

How Hypoxia Occurs
As I have stated, Hypoxia is the condition where oxygen is depleted. This is fine and dandy, but the main question is how is Hypoxia occuring in these Dead Zones and what can we do to slow this down? Hypoxia in our Dead Zones comes from too much Nitrogen being added to our water sources; again not intentionally.

The Nitrogen Cycle goes like the following. Nitrogen Gas (N2) is chemically unreactive and makes up 78% of our Trophosphere, the Trophosphere is the lower part of our atmosphere where all of our Weather occurs. Nitrogen in gas form (N2) cannot be absorbed and used directly as nutrients by plants. The proccess that allows Nitrogen to be used as nutrients for plants is caused by Nitrogen Fixation.

Nitrogen Fixation is when specialized bacteria convert gaseous Nitrogen forms (N2) to amonia (NH3) that can then be used as nutrients for plants. These Bacteria that convert Nitrogen gas to amonia live in the root nodules (swellings) of certain plants like Legumes. The converting bacteria is called Rhizobium, Rhizobium converts Nitrogen from one form to another.

How Humans Disrupt the Nitrogen Cycle
Humans disrupt the Nitrogen Cycle by adding it to aquatic ecosystems through agricultural runoff and discharge of municipal sewage. Excessive runoffs which occurs from events like Hurricanes may also wash Nitrogen into bodies of water.

How does Nitrogen HURT our enviroment?
Nitrogen is detrimental to our enviroment through a factor called Eutrophication, Eutrophication is water pollution caused by excessive plant nutrients. Humans add most of these detrimental chemicals through a wide variety of ways. The excess of plant nutrients stimulates rapid growth of algae. The breakdown of dead algae by aerobic decomposers can deplete the water of dissolved oxygen and lead to hypoxic conditions. This is usually what results in the formation of a Dead Zone.

How do these Dead Zones affect our Enviroment and us?
Obviously with the displacement of oxygen in our aquatic ecosystems, marine wildlife cannot survive with low amounts of oxygen. But, the largest depletion of oxygen from Hypoxia is usually located lower than the surface of the water. So many bottom-dwelling marine animals such as Stingrays or Shrimps are being forced to come to much higher elevations in the water to receive correct amounts of Oxygen. This is a huge problem, and is disrupting a very big and essential part of our whole world; the food chain. Large amounts of Marine animals have adapted to a bottom-dwelling life; there natural protection against predators involves there ability to stay concealed near the bottom of the water. When these animals are forced near the surface they are much more vulnerable to predators, which will whipe that specific species out (in time, of course). Also predators that only dwelled and hunted in the bottom of the waters, now are surfacing and making a whole new threat to the higher levels of the water.

The largest Enviromental problem from these Dead Zones is the amount of Fish that they are killing. With the lack of oxygen, obviously, these Fish are destined to die within a short period of time. Again looking at the food chain, where one species fails so will another above it, so on so forth; and the creatures below it will over-populate ruining the delicate fabric of our food chain. Animals that hunt from the waters, like certain mammals, birds, snakes, et cetra are now lacking food as well which could cause them to perish as well.

With the amounts of Fish dieing from Dead Zones, this has a large affect on us Humans as well. With the decreasing number of Fish populations, Fisheries are no longer bringing in any product; most of you will say this does not affect many at all, just Fisherman so just keep reading. Fisheries are now not being able to distribute Fish to our marketplaces, certain shops/marketplaces strive only on the distribution of Fish, all seafood restaurants would close. Again, this doesn't seem like a monumental factor but anyone educated in the field of Economics will realize that our Economy, just like our Enviroment needs to be kept very stable; when one portion of our Economy falls so will others.

How big is this threat?
At least 146 Dead Zone areas have been documented since the year 2000. Many Scientists are stating that this threat of Dead Zones is going to be the biggest enviromental issue in the aquatic marine relam in the 21st century. The largest Dead Zone documented so far is in the Northen Gulf of Mexico where there hypoxic zone reached more than 7,700 square miles, and despite its size the problem is largely hidden frow view, except to the trained eye.

Scientists predict such scenes will be more common worldwide. As populations grow, nitrogen and phosphorous-caused eutrophication will more than double in coastal areas by 2050. There's been a large increase in these Hypoxic zones that correlates strongly with an increased usage of nitrogen fertilizers particulary in the 60's and 70's. Hypoxia has a massive lag factor to it, when the Nitrogen enters the aquatic ecosystem the full effects are not visible until 10-20 years after the initial entry of the Nitrogen. This lag effect is worrisome, because fetilizer use has more than quadrupled globally since 1960.

What is being done to rectify this situation?
The fertilizer industry in the US has been working with farmers to reduce fertilizer overuse and resulting runoff since the 1960's. Pressure from the Enviromental Protection Agency (EPA) in the 1990's also has pushed the industry toward new technologies. Satellites are being used to track fertilizer applicators on tractors, which permits ''percesion farming" in which each acre gets specific chemicals according to its soil condition.

The American Farmland Trust (AFT), a nonprofit group that attempts to protect cropland, has developed a new form of "crop insurance." The risk-management program encourages farmers to apply less nitrogen fertilizer. The AFT gets farmers to agree to apply a lesser amount of Nitrogen fertilizer, based on nutrient management advice. If the farmer's output falls below the output of a test plot on his land that has the maximum Nitrogen fertilizer applied to it, then he receives the difference in cash via the AFT.

Another high-tech advance in slowing down this process is being worked on globally by Scientists. Scientists are trying to develop a way, to make the roots of the plants that are being Nitrogen fertilized to absorb the Nitrogen fertilizer much more aggressively. If they can get the plants to absorb more Nitrogen fertilizer, less of it will runoff into the marine ecosystem; and in the same time making plants have many more nutrients.

Conclusion
Okay, so yes this has taken me quite awhile to write. So now I'm interested in hearing some of my fellow Stupid-Boyer's views on this subject. This topic will take time to read, and any educated responses I can receive would be wonderful. Again I'm not taking any side on the issue, just displaying information and looking for responses.